I was returning home to Waterford from watching Barack Obama interviewed by Fintan O’Toole in Dublin’s 3Arena – “the arc of history still bends towards justice”, we heard Obama say, but sometimes (and here I’m paraphrasing) you have to give it a good, hard yank – when I saw my first one.
It was fluttering in the breeze, visible to anyone crossing the bridge into Waterford city. There was a second Tricolour across the road, on the other side of the bridge. Later, I would see more on a large roundabout near the hospital.
You have seen the flags yourself I’m sure, wherever you live. They began appearing in Dublin’s north inner city in late August and have been spreading like a dose of ringworm around the capital and then the rest of the country.
RTÉ analysis has found the first mentions of the campaign to festoon the streets in Tricolours came from anonymous social media accounts associated with anti-immigration rhetoric. The very first was by an account called Inevitable West, which was subsequently viewed half a million times.
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I have heard the argument made that the Tricolour is an expression of unity and national pride, and we should view its sudden proliferation on flagpoles in this light, regardless of the intent. Some even suggest we should reclaim it by hanging more Tricolours everywhere – that we should plaster the streets with them, so that we can once again say it belongs to anyone who chooses to call Ireland home.
But when the Tricolour is not used as a symbol of unity or pride – when it is displayed for precisely the opposite effect, to suggest that certain parts of the country belong to, as Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan put it, “indigenous Irish only” – I don’t think blanketing the country with more of them is the answer we’re after.
The eruption of Tricolours by – or so we hope – a small group of people who want to make a point about immigration has left the rest of us in a bind. As a stunt, it’s quite clever: who can object to our national flag? And who can say precisely what it should mean to anyone else?
The hanging of flags is, ironically, a wheeze imported from the UK, where it goes by the title Operation Raise the Colours. So far, it has left the authorities and politicians in both countries at a loss as to how to respond. Dublin City Council hinted that it might take action in September, but nothing actually happened.
Some of the social media accounts promoting the idea have made threats against anyone tempted to take the flags down: “We will publish your photos and names if you’re seen taking down the national flag of Ireland ... You’ve been warned.” It’s a win-win for them: they’ll be able to grandstand whether the flags are taken down or left flying.
We have seen on this island where the co-opting of national symbols to denote allegiance to one tribe or another leads. Those memories are still much too raw and recent for us to allow the Tricolour to be taken over as a shorthand for hate and division
The real mystery, I thought, as I drove past the flags, is why these proud patriots are so coy. If this was really about a simple expression of their national pride, why wouldn’t they pin a Tricolour to their lapel? Or even wear it on a T-shirt?
That way, when they got admitted to hospital, say, the doctors and nurses on duty would understand that the man wearing the Tricolour would prefer to wait to be treated by white Irish medics, and leave him alone until someone who fit the bill came on duty, whenever that might be. The same would apply when they went for a nice meal out (presumably not in an international restaurant) or to have their tyre changed, or to pick up a prescription.
The patriots might have to spend a bit more time waiting for service in these places of course, but that’s the way it has to be in the Ireland of their dreams, an Ireland free of immigrants.
As briefly diverting as this thought experiment was, it will never happen – not just because the proud patriots are strangely keen to remain anonymous, or because the doctors and nurses who keep our hospitals going are good and caring professionals who have taken an oath to treat everyone the same. But because we have seen on this island where the co-opting of national symbols to denote allegiance to one tribe or another leads. Those memories are still much too raw and recent for us to allow the Tricolour to be taken over as a shorthand for hate and division.
A more constructive approach is the one being adopted by individual women artists in Dublin and some in the UK. Artist Holly Pereira responded to the flags in her area of Dublin 1 with a joyful mural proclaiming that “North Strand Welcomes All”. As she was painting it, she told reporter Geraldine Gittens, 95 per cent of people “were super positive about it, but there was a small amount ... shouting at me, ‘No, we don’t welcome all.’”
Over in Dublin 12, Sarah Bracken Soper was so sickened by racist stickers blaming immigrants for violence against women that she created “Ireland For All” stickers to paste over them. In Manchester, another initiative led by women saw artists invited to redesign the St George’s flag as emblems of inclusivity. In York, campaigners have opted to fly international and pride flags alongside the St George’s one.
As flags proliferate faster than the artists can get their paint cans out, it’s hard not to see them as something else: a visible warning about how rapidly our political landscape is changing. We can’t go on pretending that the forces of ethno-nationalist politics won’t gain a foothold here. Nor can we keep avoiding having a conversation about immigration, or the communities who feel left behind. The Tricolours are sending a message that none of us can afford to ignore.
